Every year we go to London as my boyfriend is a big fan of London (or at least some of his favourite shops are located there). This year we combined our London trip with a few days in Liverpool as the hotel prices in London where exorbitant due to a big convention in the London Excel convention centre.

Recently Eurostar relaunched its product offer, while Standard remained Standard, Standard Premier was renamed into Plus and Business Premier was renamed into Premier. This was done to align the on-board products of the ex-Eurostar cross channel offering with the ex-Thalys continental offering.

The hardware remained the same, going to London we had the newer e320, based on the Siemens Velaro range of trains, on the return we had an e300 a refurbished ‘original’ Eurostar.

The Eurostar terminal in Brussels meanwhile is a bit further along in its reconstruction and is starting to feel less like a construction site. Only the walk to platform 3 (for the Amsterdam services) means walking through a boarded off construction site.

The biggest difference of the product rebranding is the food and beverage service. Due to shrinkflation it’s even smaller and more basic than before.

The worst victim was breakfast with a choice of a tiny smoked salmon brioche or an apple cake along with a small bowl of yoghurt. For drinks they only had water, orange juice and coffee or tea. It was sad that they didn’t even have a different taste of juice on offer, this should be a cheap option to offer an improved service.

On the return the lunch service was better with a choice of a vegetarian or roast beef with potato salad, salad bowl. Alongside where a bread roll with butter and a small caramel fudge bar. At least the salad bowl was a decent sized portion. Compared to the “old days” the meal offering is still downsized a lot.

The bar service was better with a choice of beer, wine, soft drinks and coffee or tea.

All in all the rebranding was clearly another cost cutting exercise. On the other hand we should be happy that at least on the cross channel services a light meal and refreshments is still complimentary, on continental services Plus is nothing more than a wider seat, nothing else. In all of our years travelling on Eurostar we only saw the service being cut down, while prices don’t really reflect that. Maybe if competition comes on their routes they will be forced to up their game again?